Spring redundancy roundup – games industry job losses in 2010

I’ve been flat out all year on consultancy projects (which is great – do contact me via nicholas at gamesbrief.com if you want to discuss how I can help you with self-publishing or building a long term games strategy).

But it means that I have neglected the Job Loss Tracker.

To catch up, here are nine job loss events in the games industry which I missed. Sorry to give you so much bad news in one go.

Monumental makes 23 staff redundant

The company told Develop that a grant of £140,000 fell through after the Monumental failed to hire the additional 22 people that would trigger the grant.

Denki layoffs as company refocuses

April 5th, 2010

Denki has announced a major restructuring to reduce the company to a skeleton team. Blaming “an old business model”, Denki bemoans the fact that the industry doesn’t “value good games… instead it values low risk games.”

While I can see Denki’s point, I think that bemoaning publishers just doing their job is a challenging response; on the other hand, cutting their business back so they can refocus on self-publishing is a sensible response to a changing market.

They give some solid advice to all developers:

If you’re an Independent Developer, and you’re not selling games directly to customers yet, start worrying, because this industry is changing beyond all recognition.

Universomo job losses, and likely closure

Layoffs hit Take Two

The company has subsequently denied this report and said that no cuts were taking place at the studio level. In its SEC filing on 3rd March 2010 it confirmed that it was reducing corporate headcount by 15%.

In December, 2009, the company had 2,263 employees globally, according to the Take Two 10K, of whom 1,633 worked in Research & Development.

I therefore estimate that Take Two is reducing 15% of 630 people, or 95 layoffs.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com

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